Because One World is Never Enough

Travel

Okay, so I’m headed back to Connecticut today (for a family visit) and then back to Brooklyn tomorrow, and in the meantime I’m going to set up a plan for my language learning as a car passenger . Remember that I’m rehearsing three languages in general:

Trinidadian Creole – Go through the grammar section in the book once more. Try to read as many sentences and about the grammar as well as you can. If you’re getting sick of that, look at the vocabulary list at the back of the book. My 4G is already in tatters and I can’t afford to have calypso music immersion on an eight-hour journey.

In short: read grammar section of the book, if you’re sick of that, read the glossary of that book. Stop immediately if your’e feeling motion sickness.

Hungarian – Anki will get you sick in the car (interestingly the Reise Know How books don’t tend to get my carsick and I don’t know why. That company has a lot of things going for it and a lot of details in its works very-well planned out). The one thing you do have is Mango Languages in the audio mode. That isn’t nothing. Make sure to use Anki during the „breaks”. You also have Colloquial Hungarian. Looking at the tables isn’t going to do you much good, but one thing that will do you much good is looking at sentences and small grammatical explanations. I wondered for about a month what on earth a „coverb” is and I finally understand it thanks to this Friday. You also have the Colloquial Hungarian Audio. In short: strengthen your knowledge using the audio.

Mossi –I know this significantly less well than the other two languages on this list, I would recommend going through the grammar sections of my Reise Know How Book, given that it contains a lot of material that my video series doesn’t cover. I don’t know if I’m going to continue the video series because I put everything in it in my Memrise course (which is also published AND the first-ever Mossi course on Memrise! I also did the first-ever Greenlandic course on Memrise! Lucky me!) I also have the audio for the Peace Corps book if I get motion sickness. In short: use the grammar section of the book, if you’re feeling motion sickness, use the downloaded audio from the Peace Corps booklet you used during your Jared Gimbel Learns Mossi Series.

Overall: Motion sickness and learning fatigue are my biggest enemies and now I have a plan to combat both of them. Another”honorable mention” enemy is actually…the fact that I sometimes want to „flirt” with other languages in the meantime, including those that I want to review on Anki or with music, or completely new ones (do I mention how I sometimes feel even more guilty with each new language I decide to „explore” , even though I’m not even seeking fluency in all of them? But hey, if I weren’t so worried about the opinions of others, I wouldn’t feel guilty in the slightest, now, would I? Now THAT is something to reflect on for the upcoming Jewish High-Holiday season and its moods of self-improvement!)

(I wrote the above plan before the trip. I wrote the reflection below after it)

SO HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED:

Not a failure per se, but a disappointment was my time with Mossi. Two things I had underestimated during the journey. For one, I did use audio and while it did help with pronunciation in some small capacity I couldn’t hear it consistently a lot of the time.

What’s more, I turned to Mossi in the final third of the journey in which my discipline was completely drained. I was only capable of doing about one page of sight-reading at a time (and sight-reading is seldom a good idea with language-learning unless you have to at the given moment [e.g. in a waiting room]).

It wasn’t completely useless but I did not think that it brought me closer to fluency at all.

Lesson learned: don’t try to force studying, especially in afternoons or evenings when you’re „not feeling up to it”. You can’t be a learning machine no matter how committed you are or how much an educational system works you down.

Much like the journey there, Hungarian proved to be a moderate sucess. I carried through with my plan exactly as I had intended and I had just the right amount of energy when I chose to go through Mango Languages Audio and Anki Sentences with the language. It wasn’t the most productive study session I’ve had, but I began to notice patterns, includin how to express favorites, indirect statements, wishes and many other important pieces.

(One thing that has struck me as very interesting through this Hungarian journey is exactly how sub-par Duolingo has really been on the journey. It has been helpful to a small degree, no doubt, but it seems that it hasn’t even been one of my top-five resources at all).

The Anki Sentence Deck has BY FAR been the most helpful thing, assisting me with patterns that constantly repeat themselves as well as showing me common constructions in words and sentences that are actually useful in conversation (in stark contrast to Duolingo’s school-of-hard-knocks Hungarian sentences that test grammar knowledge and virtually nothing else).

Lesson Learned: a single weekend (or other small period of time) can bring great results with significant focus.

And now for the big win, Trinidadian Creole. I knew exactly what the fix was with the grammar and I was gladly showing off my knowledge of Trini Creole to my family members with great amusement and amasement.

While my knowledge will certainly become more consistent as time comes on, it has been nearly a year a half since I got the book and, thanks to it as well as radio-listening and other forms of immersion (not also to mention overhearing it and other Carribean Creoles on the streets of Brooklyn), I will have Triniadian Creole join the ranks of my strongest languages!

Obviously the similarities to English made it easier…or did it? I often had to notice what sort of words were different from standard English (little can often be pronounced like „likkle”, and various vowel patterns are different in comparison to American English, and we haven’t even touched on the fact that Triniadian Creole lacks grammatical features that English has [e.no. no passive sentences, „haffu” is usually used instead of „must”, sometimes tense is indicated only by context, and, the big confusing one, the fact that the words for „can” and „can’t” sound dangerously similar!)

I came, I saw, I have one more language on my list! About time! (and Jamaican Patois is going to be one of my projects for the coming year, and one of the coming years may indeed be a year in which I agree to study no more new languages, instead focusing on maintenance and improvement!)

Concluding Thoughts:

Keeping a journal is helpful for detecting what makes your memory and mind work and what makes it slump.

Don’t expect everything to be a victory.

Don’t expect everything to be a defeat.

Analyze your current situation thoroughly before any „big mission”

Analyze past tendencies as well

Reflect afterwards

I’ll be returning to the blog with more straightforward advice and language showcases in the next few posts.

I was supposed to learn three languages over the course of the ride in order to realize how I personally could use being a car passenger to optimize study time.

However, I burnt out significantly badly within the first half, but NOT without having made very victorious gains. There were three languages that I had set aside for studying this trip: Hungarian (upper beginner), Trinidadian Creole (upper intermediate) and Bileez Kriol (lower beginner). Now let’s see how I did.

Well, first let’s begin with the big failure in this regard, the fact that I’m not making significant progress with Bileez Kriol. This was on my list for a while because my father has been dreaming of visiting Belize for year now, and as a result an English-Creole immersion mission has been in the cards for me. Given how much latent racism exists around Creole Languages, even today, I need to plan for such a mission and also publicize it widely (e.g. with YouTube vlogging).

Suffice it to say that my Memrise course and the dictionary aren’t enough to learn a language on the short term. It may be helpful for the long term, but with the tools I have now I’m afraid I don’t have enough to form sentences, and it doesn’t seem that I’ll be able to in time for my new video.

So it seems that I’m going to not be speaking Bileez Kriol in my new video, instead opting for Cornish, which is another language that I think may deserve more attention on the Internet.

(Cornish … ah, yes, the one language that I have heard disparaged the most, usually by polyglot “wannabes”. I can usually tell how genuine a polyglot is and how committed he or she is depending on how open-minded he or she is as to the prospect of having OTHER people learn minority and endangered languages. Those who show distrust or disgust or even make fun of the notion is not someone whose opinion I am likely to respect, much less trust concerning how to use language learning effectively for healing the world. It’s perfectly okay if you don’t want to learn such a language yourself, by the way. It isn’t for everyone. Just don’t disparage the idea of other people doing it.)

I’m going to continue to learn Bileez Kriol with Memrise, but I don’t see myself as being conversational in the near future, regardless of how close it is to other languages I know (e.g. Krio).

And the moderate success of the trip so far is Hungarian. One big weakness I should have accounted for was the fact that I get very sick when reading in a car. As a result, I used Anki during the rest stop breaks and got many sentences in during this time, whispering key words out loud in order to remember them.

What’s more, I also accounted for my weakness in part by having Mango Languages’ no-hands mode on my phone. (For those unaware: you can learn a language with Mango without pressing anything by having the narrator read everything out loud with definitions, complete with pauses to assist you in thinking).

I’m not fluent yet, and I think I’m only moderately conversational. I didn’t even fulfill my short-term goals of paying attention to grammar. But with Anki and Mango sentences I’m learning some of the grammar by example, which certainly isn’t nothing.

What went well: I’m detecting patterns in the sentences and in the sentence structures, not also to mention tiny pieces of conversation that are ever-so-useful. I am now with Hungarian where I was with Finnish back in 2013 when I visited the country.

What didn’t go well: I didn’t read a single grammar table at all, but given my illness that I get when intensely reading in motion I’m quite okay with that.

Anyhow, my big success over the course of the trip was Trinidad Creole. What exactly did I do right?

For one, I identified my weaknesses completely on-point. I also ate the small grammar bits in the book in exactly the right amounts, and I also used mini-speaking exercises in order to “fit” the new concepts into place. I also, due to my carsickness issue, focused on one page at a time (and I did this with the grammar section as well as another area of the book that focuses on proverbs).

I also uses memory devices in order to connect each word that was different from Standard English with a sentence that had a story. I’ve noticed that phrasebooks and textbooks that use a lot of sentences are easy when it comes to memory.

In so doing, I also gave my memory time to absorb everything and I feel that I have eliminated every weakness with this language, and all I need is exposure in order to fasten it into my memory for good.

The one thing I was missing was immersion, and if I could do it again I would have acquired Calypso music to assist with it, especially when I was feeling too weak to study or play any computer games at all.

Will I use it in my video? Probably, but maybe I should pass over a small sample by a native speaker first, using a Facebook group for polyglots or what-have-you.

What I Learned:

Expect your energy to fall down at one point, even if you don’t think that will happen.

Identify your weaknesses and your learning styles.

Make short-term goals.

Do something. You may have lots of distractions of many sorts, but the most important thing is that you can do a bunch of little things with your language doing the journey.

Don’t feel guilty if you can’t study during the WHOLE journey. Take that time to reflect on what you’ve learned.

Use audio resources when you’re very tired.

So what will I be doing during the rest of the weekend and on the way back?

I’m going to stop my book-study of Trinidadian Creole in the near future, I think I’m in a good spot and that I’m mostly conversational. I may carry the book around for reference during the rest of the trip but I think gaining fluency in this language before the year is up is in the cards!

The Hungarian book definitely should be following me more often, it’s a larger book but it should come with me when possible.

In the meantime, given that Bileez Kriol is probably not going to be in my video, I’ll substitute it for another language that will be but that may require work, Mossi / Moore.

I’ll have time to think about the procedure for the return trip while gallivanting around Buffalo.

Imagine having the ability to have spoken with your ancestors from 500 years ago. Imagine what you would learn from them, what sort of insights you would have about the way you and your family viewed the world, and even how minor things like their mannerisms and body language made you what you are.

From a physical standpoint regarding living beings, as far as I can tell, this is impossible.

But one language in my journey stood out, even more so than the dead languages I had studied and forgotten (namely, Ancient Greek and Latin), as one that was like that ancestor. Upon talking to him/her, it brought all of my interactions with the rest of its family members into place.

I am of course, speaking about the Icelandic Language. And this post is, of course, in honor of Iceland’s National Day.

It goes without saying that the contemporary language of Iceland, while in name the exact same language that Leif Erikson spoke, is now a lot different.

For one (and NOT a lot of articles about Icelandic will mention this!) Icelandic took not only English loan words from recent times, but also Danish, French and Spanish loanwords from even further back. What more, a lot of the purist words from the Icelandic Language Academy did not end up sticking with the general populace (the exact same thing happened with the Hebrew Language Academy in Israel).

That said, it goes without saying that Icelandic is significantly more purist than many other languages that have had to deal with the same “dance” that they did (translate internationalisms vs. use them straight outright).

In fact, this is one aspect in which Faroese differs from Icelandic, by virtue of the fact that more Danish loanwords, many of them internationalisms, found their way into Faroese and not into Icelandic. (Although Faroese has significant fewer internationalisms than any of the mainland Scandinavian languages of Danish, Norwegian or Swedish).

Anyhow, I’ve come to write about what made the Icelandic language so transformative for me.

It caused me to think about language evolution and what can happen to versions of a language over time.

The Norwegian of a thousand years ago would have been mutually intelligible to an Icelandic speaker. In fact, that same Old Norwegian was actually used in the latest “Civilization” game, with an Icelandic voice actor, no less!

Icelandic was (and is) very heavily grammatical, with a lot of case endings, three genders, verb conjugations and very much unlike what the mainland Scandinavian Languages are today.

For those unaware: a language like Swedish or Danish does not even change verb endings for person. It would be like saying I is, you is, he is, she is, etc.

The Mainland Scandinavian Languages did away with case endings although a small amount of idiomatic expressions survived that use them (hint: look for a preposition and then a “u” or an “s” at the end of a noun that follows!). Most Norwegian dialects kept the three genders, although Swedish and Danish reduced them to two, not unlike Dutch, in which the Masculine and Feminine became the “common” gender.

This also glosses over completely the fact that French and German words found their way into the Scandinavian Languages on the mainland while usually passing Iceland by.

What exactly accelerated language evolution? Perhaps low population densities and a lot of contact with foreigners, as well as heavily centralized authorities caused these simplifications to happen.

Given what happened to Icelandic’s immediate family members, it really makes me wonder what sort of language changes the next stages of human history will hold. Already we are witnessing an increasing amount of English content throughout almost all languages on the globe, much like the French and German languages impacted the languages of the Scandinavian mainland.

It’s truly a humbling perspective to have.

It made me think about what language purity really what (and wasn’t)

To some degree, I’ve also had a very similar experience with Hebrew as well. Like the people of Israel, the people of Iceland have had prolonged contact with English-speaking armies, who brought along their music, television and, most infamously, their profanity.

For those unaware, Iceland had an American army presence throughout most of World War II, because the allies wanted to ensure that Hitler could not reach Canada from the Danish overseas territories (which could have been Hitler’s rationale behind invading Denmark in the first place). Ensuring a presence on Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands was of the upmost importance to the Allies.

Many, many articles have been in awe about the purity of the Icelandic language, and which is a little bit funny when you end up listening to Icelandic Rap and easily lose track of how often English words (as well as Anglophone cultural references) are used!

Purist language or not, every language has to share the world with somebody. Israeli Hebrew is the language of Abraham and David – with limitations. Modern Icelandic is the language of Leif Erikson and the first European-Americans – with limitations. That’s not a bad thing in the least, it just serves to show that true purism, especially for smaller nations, is not always within reach.

Icelandic made me think about what smaller languages can be

Ask people about whether or not the Icelandic language has a future, and you’ll get many answers.

A few months ago, there was a well-publicized article about Icelandic being underused in technology (and I’ll have you all know that, while I’m writing this article, my Windows 10 system is in a [complete] Icelandic translation!) It told horror stories about 14-year-olds in Reykjavik choosing to chat to each other in English rather than in Icelandic, and that the world should be very worried indeed!

But at the Endangered Language Alliance meetings, I heard a different story: those holding up a language like Icelandic as THE success story for smaller languages. In all of recorded history there have been about 1,000,000 Icelanders tops. And yet, all of Disney’s animated canon is dubbed into Icelandic with all of the songs translated and rhymed! (Disney does this to a lot of other languages as well, no doubt, although obviously most of them are from the developed world. Also, the song translations are not thoroughly accurate reflections of the original English song lyrics, there are liberties taken but that doesn’t make it any less fantastic!)

With a language like Breton, I’m concerned for its future. I can’t always find a continuous stream of content, often a lot of people from Brittany have only a rudimentary knowledge of the language (if any at all). Comments on the internet written in Breton can be sparse, even when you know where to look. Breton seems to have been relegated to a niche environment, thanks largely to French governmental policy. That saddens me but that just simply means that I have to keep on maintaining my knowledge of Breton even more strongly.

But with Icelandic, I can easily hop onto almost any website in the country, and the comments sections will be teeming with Icelandic, the menus will be fully in Icelandic and unchallenged by the presence of any translations (most of the time). Anywhere in Icelandic settlements, even in the most touristy areas, I find that Icelandic is the dominant language I hear on the streets.

Thousands upon thousands of people throughout the globe have a desire to learn it, and many of them get permanently enamored with Icelandic, finding themselves with a treasure they’ll never give up.

The Icelandic-Language music scene is very much alive, with thousands of songs to choose from in dozens of genres. The government is actively interested in keeping the language alive, and I’ve heard that if you even go so much as to hint that the Icelandic language isn’t worth keeping alive, prepare to invite the distrust, if not in fact outright isolation, from your Icelandic peers.

Yes, in Reykjavik once or twice I encountered an ice cream store with the flavors written out in English rather than in Icelandic. I don’t doubt the problems that journalists have written about. And I think that more Icelandic products in the realm of technology need Icelandic localizations, even if it may not serve a very practical purpose in their eyes.

But whenever I think about what a small language can and should be, I would have to agree with my ELA friends and say that Icelandic is the platinum standard for small languages in the 21st century. If Breton or Irish or the Sami Languages or any endangered tongue on the face of the planet would be in the situation Icelandic is in now, there would be month-long celebrations held by its speakers.

Icelandic Made Me Think about How to Learn Grammar and Difficult Pronunciation

“I’m going to try that evil language again!”, proudly exclaimed one of my students (whom I regularly teach Swedish). “I just seem to have trouble knowing when I should pronounce the ‘g’ hard and when I shouldn’t”

Not gonna lie: I considered writing a piece about “Why Icelandic is EASY”! And I thought for a while and I thought “Uuuhhhh…there are English cognates….uuuhhh…okay, good. Grammar? No….how about…pronunciation? Mostly regular but given how often Icelanders slur and leave out consonants….no…yeah, I got nothin’…”

I’ve struggled with all of my languages, even the English creoles. Got news for you: in language learning, you sort of…don’t have a choice…except for…to struggle…until you find yourself…not struggling anymore…

Icelandic was no exception. Reciting grammar tables didn’t really help. I got the pronunciation and I was imitating the voices I heard in the apps and yes, singers (not just local favorites like Ásgeir Trausti and Rökkurró but also the aforementioned Disney songs localized into Icelandic, some of which I’ve even sung at crowded karaoke bars to standing ovations! I tell you, I have this crazy theory that almost everyone living in the U.S. has a secret crush on Iceland. And it sometimes isn’t so secret…)

But I found myself at a loss for the first few months knowing when to use what case when and even if I was getting verb forms right.

What did I do?

Instead of doing the thing I would have done in college and just studied the tables endlessly until their stuck, (TERRIBLE IDEA by the way! Even with memory devices, it might not all stick!) I made a point to listen to Icelandic music every day for months at a time. Even if I couldn’t understand everything, I would be able to detect patterns involving prepositions, pronouns, and the way Icelanders actually pronounce words.

Icelandic made me think of how, if enough people study a language, it will genuinely have an impact on the language’s future.

Few smaller languages (less than 1 million native speakers) are as popular as Icelandic (although Irish might come close sometimes).

I am thrilled to see, especially in light of the 2017 Polyglot Conference in Reykjavik (at which I will be presenting!), hundreds of people taking up the Icelandic Language, seeking to become a part of a culture that sometimes sees itself as under siege (did I mention how often tourists-doing-stupid-things-stories are featured in Icelandic news?)

Whether it be wanting to experience the Icelandic travel bug without leaving your hometown, wanting to experience this ancient culture, wanting to understand other Germanic Languages or perhaps out of sheer curiosity, these people are genuinely ensuring that the speakers of the Icelandic language know that all throughout the world, there are people that think about their mother tongue and want to keep it alive and let other people know about its treasures.

In an age in there are those that fear that a handful of cultures threaten to extinguish all others, I am a glad to be a part of this tradition that helps proudly hold our human heritage to the light.

And so can you!

The Day I met Richard Simcott and Alex Rawlings I was wearing this shirt. Two years later, guess where they bring the conference? Coincidence? Maybe not!

Here I am in the United States, more tired than I have ever been in my entire life. Nearly two weeks of absence from my blog, and I have finally returned.

The last I wrote on this blog, I committed to learning a tiny bit of Gulf Arabic, a tiny bit of Thai, as well as Burmese to a Tourist Level.

Gulf Arabic for my Dubai stopovers? Well…I did prepare a significant amount of very essential vocabulary (and yes, the Middle East phrasebook arrived on time!), but, as it turns out, given how (1) I wasn’t buying anything in any of the shops and (2) expatriates outnumber local significantly in the United Arab Emirates (this was even MORE pronounounced in the Airport, where it often felt significantly more Southern Asian at times…I should also note that I heard Hebrew spoken at the airport!)

When I tried to engage security personnel in Arabic, they virtually ignored me. But maybe I’m missing on something. I’ve heard that in Jordan (for which I failed to prepare Arabic on account of my school schedule), even a few words may get you the response “You speak Arabic better than I do!” from a local (I think it was the Rough Guide to Jordan that said this…)

Anyhow, it seems that I’ll pivot from Gulf Arabic to the Iraqi variety (but it’s not going to be my main focus). Why? I told someone at a language exchange that I would like to learn Iraqi Arabic out of curiosity, and because I studied Ancient History (among other things) in college, and I got told (on multiple occasions). “WHY? ISIS practically destroyed everything there…” (Keep in mind that I have no intention to travel to the country at this point at all, although interacting with Iraqis everywhere else would be a fantastic endeavor!)

So, did I fail? This was a surprise mission after all, but I managed to learn quite a lot under the circumstances, and I think I would be able to hold my own in an emergency situation.

Also the first time I’ve spent Ramadan (for any amount of time) in a Muslim Country. Would have never predicted that I would have arrived at 3 AM in an airport. Wowie.

Now, as for Thai…

Yeah, WAAAY too tired to have prepared it properly on the plane. And I decided to go with an app that I wasnt used to (the Japan-based LingoCards) rather than using the sturdy Mango Languages (which I think is fantastic for “activating” a basic language, actually).

That said, I was capable of using “Hello” and “Thank You”, as well as “Where is…?” The phrasebook helped.

Lesson Learned: If you expect yourself to be tired in a given situation, prepare yourself. I remember that I used to be a fire dancer and fire stuntsman in college (True story!) One thing I was told…that when you are ACTUALLY dancing with fire, expect it to go more quickly. Same here. Expecially if you haven’t had experience with a language, expect to be slower and a lot less quick-witted when using the language with other people in comparison to your exercises by yourself. This is doubly true if travel is weighing you down.

Bangkok’s Legendary Airport + Self-Proclaimed Legendary Hyperpolyglot

Now, ordinarily, I would write something about how I managed with Burmese during the two-week-plus trip, but that’s worthy of a post in its own.

The bad: I got answered in English more often there than any other place (with the exception of the Netherlands), and this is despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that few Burmese are fluent in English.

The good: managed myself using Burmese in almost every single situation (with the exception of the hotel, which is an anomaly for multiple reasons I’ll discuss in another post). I can plainly say that I have mastered basic Burmese although I am not fluent.

And, of course, next week will feature posts on Danish (in honor of the…closest thing they have to a national day) and Swedish (in honor of the Day of the Swedish Flag). Neither of them will follow the patterns I’ve laid out for the previous National Day posts.